Four More Years

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TVTV's inside view of the 1972 Republican National Convention made broadcast history. While network cameras focused on the orchestrated renomination of Richard Nixon, TVTV's rag-tag army of guerrilla television activists turned their cameras on to the cocktail parties, anti-war demonstrations, hype and hoopla that accompanied the show.

"The countercultural tide of the 1960s and 70s generated more than political protests, a growing drug culture, advancing feminism, and Bob Dylan—it also spurred an intense (though regrettably short-lived) burst of activist media makers, working in both film (the various Newsreel collectives) and newly-available portable video. One of these guerilla-style video collectives was TVTV (Top Value Television), founded in 1972 in San Francisco. With the goal of producing a more unfiltered look at the world than network television provided, TVTV adopted something like a cinema verité-style approach to their reportage. In Four More Years, their first production, they visit the 1972 Republican presidential convention in Miami. With very little editorializing, they present a surprisingly even-handed look at the delegates, youth volunteers, attending and participating politicians, and network newscasters (including Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite). The results are totally compelling: this is a raw, authentic-feeling, and free flowing look at an event that, by its very nature, is packaged and artificial. TVTV interviews everyone from youth volunteers making signs to Henry Kissinger. They allow the inherent artificiality of political showmanship and the words of their subjects—sometimes genuinely sympathetic, sometimes cluelessly self-damning—to carry things along."-- Patrick Friel, Chicago Cine-List, 10/18/12